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Saturday, August 18, 2012

Steampunk Saturday: Summer Rampage Thoughts and Results

Summer Rampage at Gamers Sanctuary has come and gone! It was a ton of fun with some great players with sweet armies showing up. I personally played three 50 point games. I wanted to try out some different lists, using an all battlegroup list, try out my battle engine, try out tier lists, but it really didn't work out that way. In the end I used the same 50 point list three times:

The idea with Summer Rampage is to pit beasts vs warjacks. For every 10 points of beast / jack you could take 5 points of infantry. That limited what I could do with tiers and stuff (and the Throne :[ ) so I just stuck to this list. Basic idea was to rock up and annihilate everything with ranged attacks, then have Angelius finish stuff off with armor piercing attacks. Lylyth keeps the whole battlegroup stealthed for quite a bit of the battle. Eyeless Sight helps me cheat like hell.

This turned out to work really well. Her spell Pin Cushion is astonishing. Really, really, really astonishing. It makes things really easy. I did 64 damage to Conquest in one round from my battlegroup. Angelius had to rock up and finish him with an armor piercing attack, but it was pretty sweet.

Geneguard's Trolls engage Retribution of Scyrah

I feel like Shepherds make the army really really easy to play. They can help me manage my fury and with some lucky threshold checks I don't really have to worry about boosting when I want. Combine that with some sweet animus action from Angelius and Seraph to keep the army mobile and Shredder to make Angelius really mad and hard to take down and you've got a recipe for anger.

My first game was against Cerberus. He'll have a battle report up hopefully that details that matchup. He brought all warjacks - new Nemo makes it really easy to allocate that much focus. He hid Nemo and Finch for most of the battle but my feat turn with eLylyth really put a hurt on. He failed some really easy rolls and I managed to disable most of his jacks to the point where I could get to Nemo and his old man stats.

My second game was against Jason and his Khador. He brought out his Conquest and I was REALLY INTIMIDATED. The model is huge and can shoot a lot. It also has a ton of synergy with many casters so I was pretty scared of what it would do to my low ARM troops and beasts.

Jason brought the Cygnar AND Khador Colossals.

I managed to move upfield. Shadow Pack (battlegroup models receive Stealth when in her control range) is amazing and really helped vs the shooting lists I faced. I put the Striders on the right flank where they could threaten his objective and softer troops in the back. Conquest had to turn to face them and protect his flank with some fields of fire, so I gained a reprieve of one turn from that thing. He jammed my line with the Gun Carriage and Angelius made pretty quick work of that with Armor Piercing. I kept shooting and moving, and then he jammed me up with Conquest. He had positioned Butcher in his lines in the middle and I saw an opening.

Before the storm. I tried to block the Gun Carriage with my Harrier, lol. Didn't work out

He had forced me to use my feat the previous turn for lesser effect, so I had to do this one with Pin Cushion. I can't overstate how sweet this spell is. Ghetto boost really helps A LOT. I ignored the Conquest and went straight for Butcher. It took Lylyth's shooting, Ravagore, CRA from the Striders, and finally Conquest rolling a 4 and needing a 5 on a free strike on my Bolt Thrower. The Bolt Thrower shot Butcher and finished him off. It was a VERY lucky shot.

My third and final game was vs Matt with his Khador. He borrowed the Conquest from Jason. I was relieved to fight that monster again. He used Harkovich and I had heard about the shenanigans with Harkovich... it could shoot twice, better armor on Hark, etc. Wasn't really looking forward to that.

I again used Shadow Pack to my advantage to move upfield with stealth. He had the Winter Guard Death Star (minus Iron Flesh, but plus Fortune) and Yuri with two manhunters, Destroyer, and Spriggan. I put the Striders opposite the Winter Guard so they could hopefully do some damage... then he put down Yuri and the Manhunters opposite the Striders. I knew it wouldn't work out for them, heh.

He moved up aggressively with Conquest and the Destroyer on the right flank. I moved up my models and feated with eLylyth. I knew I had to take down Conquest or he'd eat me up. I ran the Naga up on the right to engage the Destroyer and keep it off of me for a while... then I moved up my battlegroup to engage Conquest. Pin Cushion, every shot available, and a charge from Angelius later and Conquest was dead.

He moved up on my left with the Winter Guard and mowed down the Striders with sprays. I had killed Yuri and a manhunter but the Winter Guard were now definitely threatening my caster. Destroyer stayed engaged on the right with the Naga for quite a while and Spriggan charged in. I had tried to make a trade with Seraph but that didn't work out... Spriggan engaged both Seraph and Angelius.

I really wanted Angelius to get up in Hark's grill but managed to fail a threshold check with him, so he attacked Spriggan. I did get some damage in on Harkevich that turn, even with his 23 armor. The WG then crushed my left flank and did some damage to Lylyth... damn sprays with boosted attack rolls. I had a fury to transfer but avoided it. He had gone for broke by sending Harkevich into Seraph.

I moved up Lylyth on my right to get away from Winter Guard and to take on Harkevich. I had hit Harkevich with Pin Cushion the previous turn and upkept it. I can't overstate how awesome this spell is. I did more damage to Harkevich with Ravagore and others then put the last arrow in with Lylyth. Awesome game - very close!

I still feel like I had crutches in the Shepherds. This was also a weird way to build a list since we had to bring a ton of beasts / jacks and Legion beasts are amazing. I need to work on:

Knowing when to shoot / charge my own models

Killing UAs / solos that are changing the game way too much

Using throws and tramples and slams when they need to happen

I had a great time and am definitely going to check out the upcoming campaign that GS will be running. Thanks for coming out all!